Support Fayetteville, NC, March 19, 2005

Organizers of the Fayetteville (NC) March and Rally on March 19, 2005 to Bring the Troops Home Now need your support. I urge you to make generous contributions (click on www.NCpeacejustice.org to make donations online -- for more information, visit Stan Goff's blog), and here is the reason why.

The Fayetteville action has a potential to dramatically raise the profile of the movement of GIs, veterans, and military families to bring the troops home and help the anti-war movement grow in the South, the region that is the key to the military-industrial complex in the United States:

The South represents only a third of the nation's population, but supplies 42% of the country's enlisted soldiers -- and 56% of troops in the continental U.S. are stationed in the South.

Southern politicians are Congress's biggest hawks, tilting U.S. foreign policy away from peace and diplomacy. 62% of Southern senators scored in the bottom fifth of the legislative scorecard for Peace Action, a non-profit watchdog.

Anchored by defense boom centers in Virginia, Texas and Florida, the South produces more weapons than any other region, landing 43% of U.S. arms contracts in 2001. (emphasis added, Chris Kromm, "The South at War: A Tour Through the Heart of the US Military-Industrial Complex," CounterPunch, June 20, 2002)

After Black Reconstruction, Populism, the CIO's "Operation Dixie," and the Civil Rights movement, Southern workers remain unorganized to this day, and Chris Kromm's statistics above show the scars left by Southern workers' defeat. It is time to seriously take on the unfinished task of organizing the South. The Fayetteville action is a step in the right direction.